God only knows

Today I’m working really hard on blame and believing that it’s not my fault.

One of the most difficult things I find when dealing with depression is that it doesn’t take much to let the monster rage through my head. It’s the little things that make me feel so tired and worthless. For example, I just realized that I forgot to mail out an important form to my employers about authorizing a background check. This isn’t a big deal. I’ll mail it out tomorrow and everything will be fine. Yet it’s made me feel like I am truly incompetent and that maybe I’d be better off without the job anyway. All because this form was in the wrong pile of papers.

There are thousands of these moments through the day, each with an opportunity to be equally damaging. Is it any wonder that depression makes it so difficult to get through the day? It’s been found that those suffering from depression have a skewed sense of proportion about the importance of things and I’m certainly feeling that today.

I realize that the reason I’m having such a difficult day is because I forgot to take my meds this morning. At least I have a reason, but it would be so nice not to have to deal with it at all.

Knitting to recovery

Working on the beading/knitting project has reminded me how much crafting has helped me in my recovery of depression and self injury.

I learned how to knit at the end of my freshman year of college. I was just realizing that I could get help, that I didn’t need to be the way I was. Something was wrong and I could take steps to fix it. My very close friend came over to keep me company the night before I was leaving with her knitting project and extra yarn and needles and taught me how to knit. She doesn’t know it, but it was the best gift she could ever give me.

That summer I started a blanket of garter stitch squares and whenever I felt sad, or an urge to hurt myself, I picked up the project and knit furiously. I spent most of my free time that summer knitting.

The next year I made the decision to return to counseling on my own and went through it on my own. I was so scared that I brought my knitting with me to keep my hands busy in the waiting room. Keeping my hands busy has always been the best thing for me.

That same year when I was on the borderline between sane and suicidal I started knitting a stuffed loch ness monster. As I was falling towards the suicidal edge of the line I told myself that I couldn’t do anything yet because I was in the middle of a knitting project. I told myself to hold on until the project was done and then reassess the situation.

I never finished. I completed the knitting, seamed it, stuffed it and closed him up (his name is Ernest, by the way) gave him a scarf and hat and waited for the weekend to catch a bus to the mall to get eyes and finish him. He now lives on my bed at home and he is eyeless. I won’t consider him finished until he can see and I never intend on letting that happen. My situation has changed since then; I’m no longer dancing between sanity and suicide. I keep him unfinished because until he’s done, the promise to myself is still in place, another layer of security between me and my very worst.

No one knows this and writing it out is a bit scary for me, but it serves as a reminder to myself and I hope other people can make the same sort of promise or realize that sometimes those urges to harm can be made into something constructive.

I’m still not recovered. I have my setbacks and whenever I feel particularly vulnerable I bake or bring out the knitting. It’s nice to know that my depression can turn to creation.

Sparkle

I recently come across a list of ribbon awareness colors. I’ve also had this bauble pattern waiting to be created when I had time. As I was looking through the awareness colors, the two ideas come together. I would create my own awareness bracelet. Even if no one realized what it was, it would help me feel more open and honest. And so I created.

This has turned into a really special project for me. It has kept me busy over the last couple of days which were really difficult to get through.

The main color is green, for depression. The secondary color is orange for self injury. I know the beads look sort of brown, but they’re meant to be orange. Tertiary is yellow, for suicide awareness. It’s really hard to tell that they’re yellow because I had to choose a really light bead color to match the green, but there’s yellow in there. The fourth bead type I have in there is a clear crystal, meant to be white. I read somewhere that orange and alot of white was a recovered self injurer and that orange and one white was still in recovery. I can’t remember where I read that, so I can’t reference it, but I included it anyway.

It turned out really well. It’s a little bigger than I would like due to an extra row for finishing, but it’s very shiny.

Vocabulary

Yesterday’s post has had me thinking about vocabulary today. I realized in writing that post that I don’t like the terms “Depressed” or “Depression.” They’re alright for a medical term, I guess, but to me they don’t seem to have any connection to what they mean.

When people ask me how I am, I never say depressed. On the days when I have trouble getting out of bed or gathering energy for anything I’m “tired”, when it’s one of Those Days I’m “Not having a good day”, when it’s a day where I feel like I’ll cry if I talk to people, I’ll simply shake my head.

Anything is more descriptive that depressed. To me, depression means “A chemical imbalance in the brain resulting in the persistent feeling of sadness” and not “A crushing weight on all four of my limbs and an especially heavy one sitting on my heart.” It’s so much more than sad.

The other reason for avoiding the term is its prevalence in the media. I feel that there has been such an expansion of depression in the public view the past few years that the word no longer holds any importance to the people you interact with daily. I’ve considered informing my professors, but I always back down because I feel it won’t be considered valid. Maybe that’s a matter of ignorance, but I think that being more descriptive would lend the matter more importance and make some people realize that depression is a real, often debilitating problem. It often seems less so when it’s heard everywhere. Sometimes the media makes it seem like everyone and their brother suffers from depression and that makes me think that I have less right to use the word.

And for something more upbeat on the topic of vocabulary, I love the word “Twain” and wish it was used more often.

Depression and Blame

Today has been one of those days where I feel the need to apologize to people, even though I have no reason to do so. I don’t know if anyone else has days like these, but they come to me every so often. My conversations with people don’t feel quite right, I don’t finish what work I need to do, whatever the cause, it’s a day where I want to say I’m sorry, that I never mean any intentional harm.

I’ve found that blame and depression go hand in hand. When I started having long strings of bad days, blame sat in the corner, making itself comfortable until it became part of my normal day and I didn’t even feel its presence anymore. It wasn’t until last semester that I realized it was still around. I remember I was sitting at my desk writing in my paper journal before break. I wasn’t writing anything specific, just whatever came to mind and what came out of the pen was “This isn’t my fault.” It was followed by a long moment of relief. It had never occurred to me before that this wasn’t somehow my fault for not trying harder, or not shaking it off.

I’ve been through therapy, a dbt group, my pediatrician and am now trying medication. My parents know, my closest friends know, I spent two years with two different counselors in the university counseling center. No one has ever told me that it wasn’t my fault. There is a list of best things to say to a depressed friend and I really think that “This isn’t your fault” needs to be added to it.

So for anyone who comes across this and has spent one second too long with blame hanging around like it owns the place, whether you’re depressed, or you self harm, or you’re suicidal or you feel dull and dim for weeks or if you live your days in five minute periods because you can’t handle anything more:

It isn’t your fault.

On being medicated

Medication messes with your head. This isn’t the painfully obvious statement that it sounds like.

Dreams: I didn’t expect the dreams. Dreams on medication are vivid and multiple. Before, I didn’t dream that much and didn’t often remember them. Now I dream constantly and usually remember at least one dream I had the night before. Sometimes, if I’m dreaming about being in my room at night, I can’t tell if it’s a dream or if it really happened. Because, and this deserves mentioning twice, dreams on medication are vivid. Now it isn’t unusual for me to wake up in the middle of acting out my action in the dream. I recently woke up in the middle of handing someone money and the feel of the money in my hand dissolved. Weirdest feeling ever. I’ve taken to sleeping with my room unlocked because I don’t want to wake up somewhere on campus without any way of getting back in my room.

The ability to stop thinking: I’m a worrier. At times like this, at the end of the year with so much work to do, I worry almost constantly. With the medication, I’ve discovered an ability that I didn’t think I had; I can stop worrying. I can take a break, a shower, a walk and come back to the project or thought without so much worry tagged onto it. This extends to bad moods too. I can now go to bed after a bad day and expect a good day to follow it.

Stability: It is extremely tiring and fairly unsettling to turn moods on a dime. Usually there wouldn’t be any provocation from good to bad or bad to good except a turn of phrase or passing thought. I don’t do that anymore and that’s such a relief. I still have bad and good days, but the bad days are bad and the good days are good. There aren’t any surprises.